


A Certain Shape or Shadow

by dieofthatroar



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dreams and Nightmares, Fade Spirits, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Fade, Too much discussion of how the fade may or may not work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-11-08 03:51:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17973923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieofthatroar/pseuds/dieofthatroar
Summary: “Sharp edges, flickering fingers. He plays two games at once, one with the cards, and one with the ghost he thinks will walk through the door. Eyes up, Broody. You won’t win back your sovereigns back like that.”The elf snapped his head up to face Cole. He looked more tired than he’d ever had in Varric’s or Hawke’s minds—the cold wind making ruddy skin on his cheeks and ears. He handled a knife, now, his grip paling to white like the snow.“Who are you?” the elf said.“I am Cole. And you… are Fenris,” Cole said. He cocked his head to the side, tasting the name for the first time in his own mouth. “It sounded better when Hawke said it.”-Another story in which Hawke is left in the fade and Fenris must go save his idiot boyfriend. But this time, the only one who can help him is Cole—mind-reader, spirit, former resident of the fade, who still can’t figure out how to tie his shoelaces. This isn’t going to be pretty.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> How long have I been waiting to write DA? Too long.

Mists and missed missives. Mages that aren’t his master, aren’t marred, marked, made to serve. Made to make others like him. _Maker, I miss him._ Oh, he misses him and it hurts.

* * *

Fenris arrives at Skyhold three months after Hawke was lost in the fade. Time that had slipped away on the coasts of the Waking Sea, tracking trails of slavers and leaving not so much as a trail behind him for a letter carrier to track. It was one day under an overturned carriage, two at the abandoned barn, and the occasional night at a tavern to refill his supplies and warm his toes. Never enough time to stop and think. Never enough time for the news to catch him.

Time that felt all the more precious as he hiked the long trail South to the Frostbacks. Then, it became time enough for Fenris to fold and fold again the letter Varric had written to him until the creases softened to fraying edges. Until he could no longer read the _“I’m so sorry…”_ that bled through the page where the ice or the rain of the journey had dripped into his lap. He had long since memorized every word, but staring at Varric’s handwriting made it real. Made it not just a dream that he could push away until Hawke found his way back to his side. _“He sacrificed himself for us all…”_

It made him angry enough to pawn one of his better knives to buy enough gear to trek through the cold to make it here, to these gates. If only to see the dwarf himself and tell him, to his face, that this Inquisition of his had no right to take Hawke away from him. That they did not deserve him, in life or death.

It wasn’t that he held any hope at all that _lost in the fade_ was a fate that Fenris could reverse. Of course not. This long walk to the top of a gods-forsaken mountain was his penance for letting Hawke go. He had to walk the same roads as him, see the same burning homes and crumbling forts along the way. Remember how Hawke felt the mage rebellion was his fault, as the red lyrium was his fault, as this whole war could somehow be the fault of a single man.

Fenris listened to the whispers as he walked through the great stone gates of Skyhold, those servants and soldiers who looked at his ears and thought one thing, then looked at his sword and thought another. When he spoke, they tilted their heads and Fenris could almost hear the unspoken questions on their lips.

“Where is Varric?” Fenris demanded as they blocked his path. He let a snarl mark his face. If the didn’t recognize him, at least they would recognize their own fear.

“He is not here,” one of the larger guards said. “What business do you have with the Inquisition?”

“Only the business that they have imposed on me,” Fenris said.

“That is not—”

“Leave him.” The voice cut through the others, whispers growing still and silent. The guards turned and dipped their heads as the speaker strode through their ranks. “He is an honored guest of the Inquisition.”

Fenris knew him, though it had been years since he had last seen him, blood-stained and frustrated back in Kirkwall. Cullen.

“Knight-Captain,” Fenris said.

“Commander, here,” Cullen said. “Though that is of little interest to you, I suppose.”

Fenris took in his uniform, polished to a shine. The way his men bent easily to his word. “It is,” Fenris said, “if you are in the position to answer my questions.”

“Of course,” Cullen said and led him inside.

The room they gave him wasn’t a cell. He could open the door to the cool night air and see the dim flames of the lanterns lining the courtyard down below. He could sit and stare into the sky and wonder how a hole could be ripped into something so vast. But instead, he paced the small room and counted his steps to five in each direction, imagining bars placed on the windows.

Cullen had explained that Varric was out with the Inquisitor in Orlais, tracking a red-templar encampment that had survived after the fall of Corypheus. There were still treaties to write, nobles to please, and Venatori to drive out. So much to do in such a young victory.

Cullen had tried to apologize. To invoke some sort of kinship he pretended they had by inhabiting Kirkwall at the same time, as they had. “I know Hawke meant much to you,” he had said. “He did us all a great service.”

_Vishante Kaffas,_ as if those words meant anything to someone who could order any of his men to gladly run into enemy swords without a second thought. And he still didn’t have the answers Fenris craved.

So, he would pace this room. This castle. This self-imposed prison until he got what he wanted. 

* * *

It was always quieter in Skyhold without the Inquisitor. She herself was bright, yes. As bright a the Veil that bent, bristled around her. But it was the others who got loud when she was around. Thoughts that buzzed around the air of heroes, help, hope. When she left and he was left behind, it was as if the whole of Skyhold exhaled as one.

Cole, more often than not, kept to his attic when the thoughts didn’t need him. He found it was more exhausting behind human than he had anticipated. More and more he felt a desire to eat, to rest, to take off his armor piece by piece to massage aching muscles. Not to sleep, not yet. The fade still did not call him like that.

So, when the Inquisitor was gone and Skyhold’s walls rested, he rested and listened to quieter things. A cook fretting about beets. A knight remembering a marabi he left at home. A mage’s small wonder that she is free to simply walk out to the courtyard alone and read.

But today, something sharp and painful was calling to him. An ache and an echo of an ache. He lifted himself up, rubbed the dust off his shirt because Varric had always told him the importance of being presentable, and followed.

There were only three people downstairs, besides the barman. A couple of guards just off from their night shift and an elf, cupping wine between his hands like it would be stolen from him at any second. He was someone unfamiliar, that he’d never seen in Skyhold before, except…

“Sharp edges, flickering fingers. He plays two games at once, one with the cards, and one with the ghost he thinks will walk through the door. _Eyes up, Broody. You won’t win back your sovereigns back like that.”_

The elf snapped his head up to face Cole. He looked more tired than he’d ever had in Varric’s or Hawke’s minds—the cold wind making ruddy skin on his cheeks and ears. He handled a knife, now, his grip paling to white like the snow.

“Who are you?” the elf said.

“I am Cole. And you… are Fenris,” Cole said. He cocked his head to the side, tasting the name for the first time in his own mouth. “It sounded better when Hawke said it.”

Hurt flashed across Fenris’s face and he gripped his knife harder. His lip curled like he scented something in the air. Something like blood.

_“Far, far. Still so far to go. Nothing in this false city makes sense._ You are confused. I can show you around if you would like,” Cole said.

The scowl on Fenris’s face only grew deeper. “What are you doing?” Fenris said. “I sense magic on you, mage. Who are you?”

“I am not a mage. I am Cole,” he tried to explain. “It isn’t magic you sense it is the ripples in the Veil, shimmer, shroud around me. Around us both. It is why you can feel it. You are bright, not bright like her, but enough to walk through, sometimes. Isn’t that how you reach your hand—”

“Enough,” Fenris snapped.

“Oh no, I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?” Cole said. He fisted his fingers in his shirt. “Should I try again? Make him forget?”

Fenris tensed at that. Half-formed memories flashed through his head, just for a moment before he pushed them away. Cole could only catch glimpses of a younger, darker-haired version of the man before him, though it felt like he was looking at visions through frosted glass. Forgetting tied to pain. “Do not touch me,” Fenris said.

Cole frowned and took a step back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to help.”

“Then, leave,” Fenris said, before turning back to his wine.

* * *

It took four more days before the gates opened and the Inquisitor returned. Four more days of pointless pacing of the courtyards and drinking until he could find sleep. Four more days out of the months that he had already wasted.

Twice, a young mercenary with a Tevinter accent and little fear of an elf carrying a broadsword asked him to spar. He obliged, hoping that it would run his nerves down faster than the wine. The mercenary fought like he was once trained in the Tevinter army, but has since tried to forget. Fenris, eyeing the common feint and lunge tactic, ghosted behind the mercenary and brought the sword to his neck.

“Yield,” Fenris said.

“Ha, nice trick,” the mercenary said as he dropped his sword.

Fenris never asked for his name.

It was when he was fighting him again, down by the Herald’s Rest, that he heard the sound of the great gates opening. “The Inquisitor has returned!” shouted across the stone walls.

The mercenary scoffed. “You’d think she liked this sort of grand entrance. I keep waiting for the trumpets.” But Fenris hauled his sword over his back and made for the entrance without another word. There was a small crowd—vagrant merchants and tradesmen who hadn’t yet seen the Inquisition in all its glory, messengers who had missives ready for those who returned, and Cullen, as if he were a one-man welcoming party for anyone who entered.

Fenris scanned the party, dirty and tired from the road. The woman who was unmistakably the Inquisitor near the front, talking to a large Qunari warrior. Behind them, an assembly of agents and guards, a couple dragging prisoners behind them. Then, finally, the dwarf. Fenris pushed his way to the front.

“Varric,” Fenris said. Varric stopped dead.

“Broody,” Varric said but didn’t turn to face him. His eyes closed slowly as the rest of the returning party scattered across Skyhold. “You’ve finally joined the party.”

* * *

It isn’t just the person he mourns. It is himself, _with_ him. Steady, steadying, steady-on. A future painted on cracking glass. How could he have it without the person who told him first? _You are no slave. Not with me._

* * *

They found an empty stretch of the ramparts to talk. The air was colder there, where the bitter wind could sweep across the mountains to send a chill to Fenris’s bones. But it was better here than where the rest of the Inquisition could see them. Where he would have to give his best impression of a good guest who wouldn’t kill the nobles crowded around the great hall. Here, he could spit and kick at the broken stone and Varric would simply shrug.

“They didn’t know him,” Varric was saying. “They didn’t know him like we did. They tried to, it wasn’t their fault, but—you saw it—Hawke was already changed. It was harder to know him.”

_Changed._ Fenris knew what Varric meant. The way in the time after they’d escaped Kirkwall, Hawke turned more and more into himself. Became quiet when Fenris wasn’t looking, frown etching more and more clearly onto his aging face. Fenris didn’t ask questions. He trusted him—more than Fenris trusted himself. That Hawke knew what his limits were. That every time he came back from chasing slavers, hands bloody and mind worn, Hawke would be there to welcome him. To remind him, again and again, that he would never again find himself back in chains.

“So they will not care enough to get him back,” Fenris said.

“Get him back?” Varric said. “He was left behind in the _fade._ Physically there! You can’t just waltz in there, destroy a demon, and pop back out.”

“The Inquisitor did it.”

“Twice.” Varric sighed. “Though not by choice.”

Fenris rubbed at his face. It felt as if the frost were eating at his flesh, small cuts of a blade on his cheeks. “So, we can do it again,” he said. “Is this not what your Inquisition is for? Your mages and your research and those agents I see out in the furthest reaches of Thedas? What good is all that for?”

“Defeating Corypheus,” Varric said.

“And now?”

“And now…” Varric said. He looked out past the frozen water to a horizon hidden by the mountainside. “What happened, with you and Hawke? I was surprised he came alone.”

Fenris threw a pebble off the ledge and watched it disappear in the stonework below. Again and again, Fenris reminded himself, Hawke had always known what was best.

“We were near Amaranthine,” Fenris said. “Slavers were praying on the elves in the local alienage, but I was the only one who they let near. It wasn’t like Kirkwall where they were used to humans and dwarves strolling through every day. They saw Hawke and wouldn’t talk, but they saw me…” Fenris gestured vaguely to himself. “Even if I was a stranger, I was more like them than their human neighbors. I was the only one they’d talk to.”

“So you stayed with them?”

“As long as I thought I had to. Meanwhile, you sent word to Hawke that you needed him here.”

“And he came, alone,” Varric said.

“He would have anyway,” Fenris said. He shook his head. “If he truly wished for me to come he would have—but no, he wrote me a letter. A simple note that said he was leaving. That I had work to do and he wanted me to finish my job first. It was only after I left the alienage that I found out what work he had left for.”

“Why didn’t you follow him then?”

“Because he did not wish me to,” Fenris said, feeling each syllable drag out, coated in ice. “He left when I could not follow and led me to believe it would not be for long. I had a choice, then. Continue to follow the slavers I had worked for months to track or follow a man who had made it clear he did not want me near.”

“Oh trust me, Broody. He wanted you near,” Varric said. “He just wanted other things more.”

“Still, I made my choice. I could have come. Stopped him from making this foolish decision to sacrifice himself—”

“To save everyone else,” Varric said.

“I could have made it someone else’s job,” Fenris snapped. “Someone who didn’t matter as much.”

“To us,” Varric said. “But to them? To the Inquisitor?”

Fenris said nothing. He closed his eyes and listened to the snap of the flags and the groan and crack of ice breaking on a faraway peak.

 

Varric took him to meet the Inquisitor later that day. Took him up to her tower in the sky, all silken drapes and stained glass windows. The elf that greeted them seemed almost a different person than the one he saw drag her sword in through the gates. With a sharp gaze and steady frown, she regarded Fenris with care. It reminded him more of a craftsman’s eye than a fighter’s.

“Inquisitor Lavellan,” Fenris said, dipping his head. If he would get what he wanted, he needed to play their game. Bowing to those who thought them above him was still something he knew how to do.

“Andaran atish’an,” the Inquisitor said.

“Mithadra,” Fenris said. “But if you know anything of me, that is not my culture.”

“No,” she said. “Though it would feel rude not to greet you properly.”

Fenris noticed her lack of vallaslin, but didn’t say anything. Her speech and way she held herself spoke more of her Dalish upbringing than any markings could, though he did wonder. She was not so young that she would not have gone through the ritual. Perhaps there was more to this elf than he assumed.

“You come for answers,” Lavellan said.

“No,” Fenris said. “I come for support.”

She blinked and Fenris could not read her reaction.

“What he means,” Varric supplied, “is that we want to know if it is possible to go back into the fade. To save Hawke.”

“No,” Lavellan said.

“There must be ways,” Fenris said. “If the stories they tell are true, it is not only you who have walked in the fade. There were others, could always be others. You must know of passages or spells—”

“That would kill you,” Lavellan said. “Or, would rip open the fade for demons to come through again. I cannot promise you safe passage and I will not endanger what peace we have already fought for.”

“I do not care what happens to me.”

“But _I_ care about the Inquisition.”

“And Hawke was forsaken for your Inquisition,” Fenris said. “It isn’t about what I deserve to know, it’s about what you impose on your followers. Is this the organization you lead? One that disposes of your allies as if they are nothing?”

Lavellan opened her mouth, anger snapping to her features for the first time, but she quickly schooled her face and shut her mouth. “It is not an organization of one. No person, not even me, is above the needs of Thedas.”

Fenris barked out a laugh, bitter and cutting. “There are lies in the way you speak. You have spent too much time in the company of nobles, Harellan.”

Lavellan frowned and shook her head.

“Would you rather one more enemy?” Fenris continued, his lyrium flaring to life. “If it truly means nothing to you?”

“Fenris,” Varric said, holding out his arm. “He means well, Inquisitor. Don’t let the spiky outside fool you. He’s really a softy.”

Lavellan was not moved. “You would rather Hawke’s sacrifice meant something,” she said. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

Fenris growled. It was always this, power over parts of him that he could not protect. Let him fight and tear a hole through body after body, if it meant he would not have to feel. Let him make armor of his healing wounds. But this? He let his markings fade and turned away.

“Ir abelas,” Lavellan said. “For what it’s worth.”

“Ma harel,” Fenris said. “But, as you say, it was for your Inquisition.”

* * *

It is him. He whose worth is paid for in gold and blood. Waiting, wanting, weaving a story in which he is free. But he cannot both be free and tied to another, can he? Is that why the memory of chains feels so heavy?

* * *

Cole came because the bright light had wavered. It had dimmed like the last of a candle after a long supper, tired and spent. It was a loss and anger that fed each other, always, underneath.

He found her on her balcony, hair down for once, swaying to an echo of music he could only hear in her head.

“Cole,” she said when he stepped out to meet her.

“Inquisitor,” he said. “You are sad. The words, they reminded you of Solas.”

She smiled, but it was like the Orlesian masks, only on the outside. She would remove it as soon as nobody was watching. “You don’t need to read my mind to know that.”

Cole listened to the wind instead, how it blew up the thoughts of everyone below them. It filled the air with chatter that made everything else fade away.

“It feels the same for him, you know. _He left. Was I not enough? What is wrong with me? No, it doesn’t matter. Finding him, that is what matters.”_

“I told you, no need to be in my head,” Lavellan said.

“I was not,” Cole said. “That was Fenris.”

Lavellan laughed. “Of course,” she said. “And you are here to convince me to help him, are you?”

“He is… loud, distracting,” Cole said. “His hurts are the same as many, but so pointed. Focused. He is _good,_ I know it.”

“But you also understand why I refused him,” Lavellan said.

“No,” Cole said. “Fear, fate, fatality… you refuse more because you are scared of what Fen’harel left behind. He reminds you too much of what you feel you cannot do. But it is different, see. You still have work, cannot sacrifice yourself, but for him? He can follow his fears further.”

“There is still the risk—”

“No, no,” Cole said, shaking his head furiously. “Don’t tie down your mind like that to make the path straighter.”

“I suppose you spoke to Fenris yourself about your desire to help him?” Lavellan said.

“I tried. I scared him,” Cole said. He rubbed his fingers up and down the buttons along his sleeve. “I am still not good at being human.”

She shook her head. “Oh, Cole.” She smiled, soft and genuine. Real. Cole clung to the shape of it. She sighed, looked away. “There is the research I asked Dorian to do. Old magic, lost or forgotten now. It was just research, something to keep Dorian happy and to make me feel like I wasn’t just letting him go, but…”

“If Fenris wants to try?” Cole said.

“Yes,” Lavellan said. “Let’s go help, shall we?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spirits! Demons! Oh, my! Fenris does not like this one bit.

Of course, in the patchwork group of overpowered misfits that was the Inquisition, they would have an altus mage. Fenris could see his highborn, careless swagger as soon as he entered the room. Every altus thought they were different—separate from the magisterium that made them powerful—but with every custom thrown off like an old coat, the essence of their nature grew stronger.

“Dorian Pavus,” the mage introduced himself. “And what a pleasure it is to see _someone_ is curious about the work I’ve been doing, locked away in the library for days at a time, with not so much as a courtesy of asking how the research is progressing.”

He gestured to a desk covered in books and stray papers, ink staining the parchment in streaks. Fenris was surprised that Dorian looked truly proud of this little pocket of the library. That made him more nervous than any title. It was those like Anders or Merrill who _played_ with their magic, enjoyed it in itself, that were the most dangerous. They thought of it as a toy. This Dorian seemed no different.

“Dorian,” the Inquisitor said, a playful hint of scolding in her voice. “It isn’t as if you are camping in the Hissing Wastes. If you’d rather, I could send you to scout there.”

“No, my books are rather better company than the lurkers.” Dorian turned and put out his hand.  “Fenris, I presume. An honor.”

Fenris looked over the rings and finely filed nails. “Are you another who claims to be a friend of Hawke’s?”

“Gracious, no. He stayed at least twenty paces from me at all times. No doubt a mishandled loyalty to you,” Dorian said, retracting his arm. “I, like so many others, met you through the pages of Varric’s bestseller. Though, I did hear rumors of an elf of your description in Minrathous years ago. Do you truly fade-step through solid objects?”

“Human flesh included,” Fenris said.

“Sparkler, I don’t think that’s the best—”

“Oh, hush, Varric,” Dorian said. “There’s no use prancing about it like an Orlesian handmaid. Yes, my father is a magister and I understand your time with our kind was not… a good one, shall we put it. Danarius was never the picture of restraint. He was brilliant though. Mad, but brilliant. And _look_ at that magic. Horrifying! I’d love a closer look.”

“You’d get a good look if it’s halfway through your throat,” Fenris said.

“Ah, yes. I do suppose I deserved that. Later, then,” Dorian said. “Now is the time for other interests. Have you heard of a somnaborium?”

Fenris cocked his head. It was only a word to him, something he may have heard in a dinner party of mages back at Danarius’s side.

“Is that not what you had called Corypheus’s orb?” Lavellan asked.

“That is what I had first thought,” Dorian said. He rustled through a heavy volume and found a marked page with a detailed figure of a sphere, the engravings on the surface each with lines of description below. “Vessels of dreams… they were keys to unlock doorways to the fade created by the Magisters of old, but were only a crude mimic of the magic of the ancient elves. They did not have the time to master the enchantments needed, so instead they tried shortcuts. Blood magic, sacrifice, all the good stuff. But there lies the fascinating bit of history. They failed to make a true replica of the orb and instead made something completely different.”

“But they still entered the fade,” Fenris said. “They still did what they set out to do.”

“Clearly. But it was through blood magic, not elven magic, that they succeeded.”

Fenris frowned. “Blood magic cannot be the only way forward,” he said. “The unstable wishes of mages who think—”

“Yes, yes. _Blood magic bad,_ I get it,” Dorian said. “Do you wish me to continue? Or does entering the fade not matter to you.”

Fenris crossed his arms.

“The core of blood magic is the _influence._ It augments abilities and twists minds. Most of those early spells they described would kill you. Broken things that would tear a person in half before summoning a demon that would devour your friends. But there were a few that seemed to work, just not in the way they imagined. They _became other things.”_

“You mean the magic they used to enter the fade still exists?” Lavellan asked.

“Not used for _that_ anymore,” Dorian said. “But magic used to manipulate the veil in the same way, yes. I only realized after reading Pharamond’s letters and comparing them to the Cassandra’s Seeker knowledge that I realized! It wasn’t the blood of the slaves that opened the fade to the Magisters Sidereal. It was the _passage_ of spirits.”

Demons open the fade to the waking world? If that were true, there would be many more blood mages physically walking the fade.

“They were picked and then paled in this world. Passages ripped open. It was not what they wanted and so the door wasn’t a door but a broken thing. When it is just one, they slip through. Ripples on water that disappear.”

Fenris jumped. He hadn’t noticed the boy kneeling by Dorian’s papers, picking through them with hair falling over his face. It took him a moment to remember that they had met before, recognition more in the way his lyrium markings prickled the same with the magic that curled around him. It made him more unsteady than an altus ever could.

“Goodness, Cole. How long have you been there?” Dorian said. He picked a stray note of his from Cole’s hands and put it back on the haphazard pile, pushing him slowly away from the mess. “No mind. He’s right. It was the sheer number of spirits, physically sent through the veil that ripped that hole open. No single demon could do the same.”

“So there is a way to… open that door, instead of kicking it in?” Varric asked.

“Slip in, as Cole was saying, except the other way,” Dorian said. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Summon a spirit to follow back into the fade?” Fenris said. “I see nothing better in that than blood magic.”

“That’s because it doesn’t work,” Dorian said. “Not, as you say, with a demon. Nothing bound by blood mages on this side would ever be able to bring another through the veil with them. Without their mind, they do not know the fade well enough to guide another back through. The same goes for abominations, benign or otherwise.”

“What exactly is the modern magic this has become?” Lavellan asked. “When I talked to Sol—well, what I know about spirit magic, there was nothing like this.”

Dorian raised his eyes. “Cole?” he said.

“The empty walls of Adamant. Corpses sheltered where the veil was thin. _It wasn’t what I wanted. I couldn’t feel a thing,”_ Cole said and shuddered. “Pharamond knew. The reversal of tranquility.”

“A spirit can come and touch the _mind_ of a tranquil mage to connect them back to the fade,” Dorian said. “The magic we are looking for is for the entire body to follow.”

“Spirits wish for this world,” Cole said. “They shape, shimmer, shift the fade to be like _this._ They can touch the mind and return, but once they are here they become—they un-become. They are scared. They lose the way home.”

Fenris took a step back into the firelight. Away from these mages. Away from the talk of thin veils and demons and possibilities that he could imagine as idle chat before wine back in the Imperium. _“Venhedis._ What is the use of your research if you say it is impossible?” he said.

“But it is not,” Dorian said. He looked at Cole, whose wide eyes looked back like those owls that circled his campsites when he traveled, looking for the mice that strayed into the light.

“Fenris,” Varric said. “Have you had the pleasure of meeting Cole?”

Fenris grunted. “I have met your strange mage.”

“Oh, Cole is no mage,” Varric said. “Kid?”

His eyes found Fenris’s and the magic around him pulled at Fenris’s skin. “I can feel him still there. _Amatus, festis bei umo canavarum._ I can guide you back to your Hawke,” he said.

* * *

“A _demon?”_ Fenris said. He was pacing his room again. It seemed, when he was angry, to only take four steps to reach the stone wall on either side.

Varric put his hands up. “A spirit,” he said. “A spirit of _compassion_ who just wants to help.”

“After all that we saw in Kirkwall, you will trust this creature?” Fenris said. “Is it so hard for you to learn?”

“The kid is not the same as those demons,” Varric said. “That is what Dorian meant. It is so hard to enter the fade with a spirit guide because spirits just don’t have the… I don’t know what you’d call it. The state of mind. The _sanity_ to want to go back.”

“And this one is different?”

“He is,” Varric said.

That was what his lyrium must have felt when they first met. A strange pull along the edges of his aura, usually one he only felt on mages who always had the hold of the veil close at hand. The magic, it curls around a person—no, not a person. A being. _Demon._ What makes this one different than the one that stole Hawke? It has a face, but he knows just as well as anyone that demons lie in their appearances to lull one into trust. This demon that knows his thoughts, then slip from his mind.

It was worse than the altus. Tevinter mages he could deal with. He didn’t like it, but he understood their whims. It wasn’t as if he ran from flashy armor and a Tevene accent. Dorian’s forwardness was indeed a more welcome change than the sideways compliments with knives under the table he had dealt with in Minrathous. Threats dressed as pleasures. No, Dorian’s shedding of Tevinter life included that sort of posturing. Fenris thought that if Dorian wanted something, he would demand it outright. Nothing more than he had dealt with in Merrill and her need to push boundaries.

Dorian would not be a friend, but Fenris would not waste is energy on him.

“Nobody summoned him, Fenris,” Varric said. “We made sure of that ourselves. Cole came to this world because he felt the hurt and he wanted to put it right. He’s still learning how but, the kid… he’s almost too good for any of my stories. No one wants to read the ballad of the goody-two-shoes.”

“He was in my _head,_ Varric.”

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. You should have heard what he dug up on Cullen the other day. _Terrible chafing. Still can’t find my knickers. Wonder if Sara stole the whole lot of them…_ We remind him once in a while what privacy means, but you get used to it.” Varric crossed his legs over the small bed and the wood creaked. “What else can you do? Do you have another way into the fade?”

“You know that I do not,” Fenris said.

“And I also know that if you don’t agree to go, I will. However, it is your journey to finish. And, I think, you will have a better time than me in finding our champion once in there,” Varric said. “It’s not as if I’ve been to the fade, in the flesh, or in dreams.”

Fenris paced, tugging on the fraying edges of the red cloth tied around his wrist. It was not the first, that had long since been lost to the Waking Sea, but one of a line that all mean the same thing. _I remain at your side._

“I do not look forward to it,” Fenris said. “In my experience, it is not a pretty place.”

Varric clapped him on the back, hiding his relief in a hearty laugh. “They say it depends on the dreamer. But again, what do I know?”

* * *

Dorian held his hands out, palms facing Fenris. His jewelry glinted in the sunlight that filtered through the window. “No blood,” he said. “See?”

“Get on with it, mage.”

“Simply being thorough,” Dorian said. “Can’t have anyone running off shrieking in terror when I’m trying to concentrate.”

“I do not shriek,” Fenris said.

“And I am not the sort of Tevinter magister who tries to open a door to the fade,” Dorian said. “But there is a first time for everything, isn’t there? But as long as nobody tells Vivienne about this whole business, we will all hopefully make it out alive. Now. You stand there. Yes, and Cole? Where did you get off to?”

“I am still here,” Cole said. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the complicated runes scorched across the floor. The border was faintly glowing and it sang a song that all of Dorian’s magic sang—high and fast, like bells blowing in the wind. He told Dorian once that his magic reminded him of the fade, but since falling back in with the Inquisitor at Adamant, he had realized that the fade now scared him. It was unnatural to be there in the flesh, and yet…

“Goodness, why do have to be so quiet?” Dorian said.

He clasped his hands together and felt the restless fear in his stomach fade. “I’m sorry.”

“No matter. Cole, stand over here, across from Fenris. Yes. Now, what this spell does is makes the veil thin and _allows_ for transportation, but it’s you, Cole, who must pass through first to lead Fenris in.”

Cole nodded.

“And Fenris, _let him lead you._ If you try to take charge this will not work, understand?”

“You’ve told us at least six times—”

“Oh, how wonderful, now I’ve told you seven. You’ll thank me when you remember,” Dorian said. “Everyone settled? Brilliant. Let’s begin.”

Cole closed his eyes and pictured a home that was no longer home. He pictured change and stillness in one. He could feel Dorian’s magic swirl around them, singing louder and louder until it echoed in his mind and in his body. The veil grew as thin as paper and he could see, through his mind, the reaches beyond. The fade, where he thought he’d never step again.

Stepping through was as simple as the way he transported himself across Skyhold. He saw the other side. He need only picture himself there, gather the veil around him and…

...step…

It was cold, like jumping into a lake, tugging on his human joints and pulling and sucking and…

...drowning…

Cole opened his eyes. All was still.

Until the heavy exhale of Fenris beside him.

“This is not the fade I walk in my dreams,” Fenris said.

Cole took a moment to steady himself. _Wrong, wrong, wrong._

He could not lose himself here. Orient. Observe. The light was dim, through a fog that would not end. He took a breath and thought it would feel damp, but of course, it was as dry as the desert. Still, ever still, the shadow of the Black City on the horizon, obscured by an echo of a false sun.

“This is not a place of anyone’s dreams,” Cole said. “Come, there will be others who sense you soon.”

“Others?” Fenris said.

“Spirits,” Cole said and took his hand so he would not lose him, choosing a direction and stepping forward. “They wish for your world. You are the brightest thing here.”

As they walked, the fog slowly condensed and formed into a landscape more recognizable. Tall pines and sharp rocks, rising to meet dark and swirling clouds. An ocean on the other side of a hill that never seemed to get closer. The smell was familiar. A mix of salt and silt.

“The Storm Coast?” Fenris said.

“It is responding to your thoughts,” Cole said. “Churning, changing, _the fog must lift soon._ You have brought the rain.”

Fenris stopped. “Do not pry into my head, demon.”

“I am _Cole_ ,” he said. He wrapped his arms around his middle. Solid. He was too solid for this place. “And I am sorry, but here it is louder. The whole land can hear you.”

Fenris huffed, pulling his sword from his back and turning slowly. “You say so like it is simple,” he said. “But nothing feels real here. I cannot _feel_ properly. My markings—I’d usually be able to—but I can’t even feel you.”

Cole didn’t say that he knew what that felt like. That the feeling he was stuck and sinking into the ground, so heavy, was almost impossible to bear. He must endure. To help, to succeed, he must. The mud coated his boots and the weight of his own flesh slowed him down to a crawl.

He could hear Fenris’s fears all around him. His distrust in him, in this place. It was empty now, but it was only a matter of time before a spirit found them, the strange beasts that had wandered into their land. It was empty here, but not deserted or too sick. Courage would want to curl his fingers around Fenris’s will to step into the nothing. Hope would whisper into his ear. Rage was easy. Rage would dig deep into that pit that Fenris hid below his heart. That part of him he would never let go. And Love...?

Cole could not feel them, but they would be coming.

As they walked further, the forest grew denser. The trees obscured the horizon and they had to cut their way through the underbrush to find the path anew. Time meant nothing, minutes or days did not matter here, but Cole knew that his shoulders grew tired and his mind grew restless.

Until something moved in the distance. A rustle of leaves, at first. Closer.

A shadow approached. Then another, appearing out of the thicket of trees.

“I can’t feel them,” Fenris said, trying to cover the waver in his voice. “What are they?”

“I don’t know,” Cole said. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, fingering the knife he knew would be little help against these creatures.

“Then what good are you?” Fenris said. They multiplied, the shadowy figures. Nothing more than a suggestion of a body. They moved steadily forward, surrounding them. When they could retreat back no further, Fenris lifted his sword and swung.

Cole’s vision went black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris and Cole move on. Or, try. Their pasts get in their way.

When he blinked, Cole found himself in a tavern, though not one he’d ever seen before. It was not the familiar wood and song of Harald’s Rest, or the crowded place that Varric thought of as home. No, this one smelled of pine and cooking meats. It felt like the midpoint of a journey.

“We _at least_ three days ahead of those templars,” a voice said behind him. “And three days behind those slavers. Please, let us rest somewhere with a _bed.”_

Cole turned and found a vision of Fenris and Hawke, sitting across from each other at a table near the bar. Between them, a single bowl of thick stew. Fenris turned the spoon lazily, poking at the potatoes he unearthed from the gravy.

“Fenris,” Hawke whined, pulling at his gauntlet. “Think of how nice the bedding will be! We may fall asleep naked and not die of the chill.”

Fenris chuckled, a sound that came deep from his chest. “I do not wish to think of who else had slept naked in those same blankets.”

“Is that a yes?” Hawke said.

Fenris turned his hand over, running a finger over Hawke’s wrist. “Whatever happened to the tough mage who could brave the elements?”

“He got left behind in some cave by the Storm Coast after the third straight week of rain,” Hawke said.

“That mansion of yours made you soft.”

“What of yours?” Hawke countered.

“Mine had holes in the roof. I got used to the rain.” Fenris’s finger trailed up Hawke’s arm to his neck where he lingered, playing with a stray curl of Hawke’s hair. “Come, let us enjoy a warm bed.”

The scene dissolved as the walls fell away and the mists of the Storm Coast appeared again. The trees rose where there were once pillars of wood holding up the roof. The warmth of the fire at the hearth disappeared, replaced by a damp chill and whistling wind. Cole watched as Fenris spun in place, false-rain falling on his flushed face.

Cole drank in the sting of pain that sparked through Fenris’s heart anew.

“I told you,” Cole said, reaching out to take Fenris’s arm to lead him away. _“Neverending road, rocks between my toes, the mud will never wash away._ This place listens!”

“Do not touch me!” Fenris said, swatting Cole’s hand away.

“A memory,” Cole said. “That was all it was.”

“That _thing_ was not simply a memory,” Fenris said.

“A wisp,” Cole said. “Perhaps. Young wisps of knowledge or purpose. Not yet set in their abilities as spirits, but attracted to your thoughts.”

“So you wish me to _think_ more _quietly?”_ Fenris hissed.

“Yes,” Cole said.

Fenris curled his lip and stalked away. 

 

Fenris was not able to think any more quietly.

They kept marching forward, into what Cole now recognized as the realm of some spirit, though he did not know which. The wisps grew greater in number, though many were content to just watch them from the branches, turning their shapeless bodies towards the sound of their steps. Others drew closer, wishing to understand creatures from the other side of the Veil.

Their path too grew more rigid. Older, like other minds had passed through and molded this place. Scorched it with past hurts or made the buds grow from the trees with their hopes. Crumbling stone held up statues of old gods and the remains of wells and campfires that had long gone out. Spirits often did this—constructed their lands from pieces that they had taken from other’s minds. Echoes of real places from many different eyes. Those many thoughts had made it, but the spirit tended to it. Made it _theirs._

Cole couldn’t yet tell which spirit this realm could belong to.

It wasn’t long before another wisp approached. This one was long and thin, with eyes that matched the soft glow of a candle. Fenris took a step back.

“It should not hurt you,” Cole said.

“Somehow, I do not trust your assurances,” Fenris said, bringing his sword forward once again.

“It does not know—”

“Can you not hear it?” Fenris said, tightening his grip. “It speaks of things it should not know.”

Cole couldn’t hear _it_ , though he could guess what it saw in _Fenris_. What it wanted for itself.  _You will not take him,_ repeated in Fenris’s mind. Too loud. Still, much too loud.  _He will not be lost in this wretched place._ Before Cole could hold him back, the wisp flashed forward, and Fenris struck it clean across its middle.

Darkness, again.

Then, light. A bright light of the outdoors at midday in a busy market square. This, thought Cole, must be Kirkwall. Cole slipped through the crowd to find Fenris, strolling slowly with Hawke at his side.

“You must have heard what the maleficarum have been doing lately,” Fenris said, low enough that the passers-by would not overhear. “You cannot simply ignore—”

“Oh, look at that!” Hawke said, pointing to a merchant’s stand. It was covered in tunics of every color, finely stitched and selling for extraordinary prices. “You do like me in red, don’t you? Maybe I shall buy one for next dinner together.”

“Hawke, I’m trying to tell you to—”

“Orana is always upset when we don’t dress up for her meals,” Hawke said, fingering the edge of cloth. “Don’t you wish to see her happy?”

“Amatus,” Fenris said and it almost sounded like defeat. “Do not throw your life away for a rebellion that will not succeed. I will stand by you, you know that. But this war, these mages, they do not know what it means to fight the will of the templars.”

“And _I_ don’t know what it means to be an apostate in this city?” Hawke said. “I’m not throwing my life away. There is no stopping this war and I have a duty—”

“You have done enough!”

“—to this city. Yes, Fenris. But I can always do more,” Hawke said. “Can’t you see they simply want to be free?” 

“They are not slaves,” Fenris said.

“But they are also not your old masters,” Hawke said. He held out a red and gold dress shirt, with sparkling buttons down the front. “I think I would look quite handsome in this, though it _does_ need more ruffles.”

“You do not need clothes to look handsome,” Fenris said. “Let us go.”

“Was that a proposal?” Hawke said. “Though if I remember, last night you asked me to wear that—”

_“Hawke!”_

“See,” Hawke said, a laugh playing on his lips. “Despite what you think, I listen.”

The scene fell away and Cole and Fenris were left standing on an empty road. A couple of wisps floated around the perimeter but made no move to come closer. Instead of them, Cole watched Fenris with care—the way he bit his lip and curled his gauntlet limply around the hilt of his sword. The way he looked down at the mud and silt staining his feet.

"You don't need to let the memories play out," Cole said. "If you try, you can step, swerve, storm through—"

"Hah," Fenris scoffed. He would not look Cole in the eye. He tried another way. 

“Hawke knew you trusted him,” Cole said. “When he was at Skyhold, Hawke worried—”

“Do not speak his name with your demon tongue,” Fenris said.

“He was not forced. You think that he, no— _free men do not walk to their deaths._ But you made him careful, cautious. Curious, too, to what was beyond what he could see. ”

“Cautious, hah. In the end, the mage rebellion took him anyway, didn’t it?” Fenris said. “Hawke was always the fool. There is nothing more to say. Let’s move on.”

* * *

They kept coming.

The further the thing that called itself Cole dragged him into the fade, the more those wisps would come. Each one bringing an old memory he would have rather not shared. Pieces of his life with Hawke—long nights and longer days that rested heavy on his mind. Snippets of Kirkwall, before it burned. A stray smell, down in the deep roads, or the light reflecting off of Merrill’s staff. Some things he’d rather forget.

It dragged on him, these memories. They made him more tired than any journey by foot through mystic forests ever could.

“There is more love in you than hate,” Cole said after they emerged from a rather terrible fight between Fenris and Anders. It was early in his time in Kirkwall, when it felt like the Magister’s grip on his mind would never lessen. When every mage, including Hawke, was a potential enemy, and nobody seemed to heed his warnings. He was a silent voice again, screaming into ears that would step on him to get what they wanted. Anders was the worst of it. “But there was a time when that wasn’t true.”

“I wonder if that is still the case,” Fenris said.

“It is not,” Cole said. “I know because that was once me.”

“Somehow, I doubt that, spirit.”

“I hurt people because I thought it would make me feel more alive.”

Fenris tilted his head. “And did that work?”

“Not for very long.”

“Then perhaps you are right,” Fenris said. “We may indeed be alike.”

With each wisp, they stumbled further into Fenris’s past. To when he first met Hawke, hand still dripping with fresh blood. When he was on the run, always looking behind him, never thinking he would ever look ahead.

And eventually…

The blackness came again, engulfed him and spit him out at the feet of Danarius.

“Fenris,” Danarius cooed, stroking his hair. Fenris lay on a cold, stone floor, not daring to look up. Again and again, those fingers grazed his scalp, taunting him with small charges of electricity that coursed down his spine and made the hair on his arms stand on end. “My loyal wolf.”

“Yes, master?” Fenris said. He did not want to say it. He did not want this, and yet, he could do nothing to change the past.

Danarius’s fingers tightened around the locks at the back of his head and he pulled hard. Fenris’s head snapped back as Danarius’s other hand wrapped around his neck. “You will obey me tonight, won’t you, my wolf? You will not embarrass me again.”

Fenris could not see Danarius’s face. Could not see what this threat meant, today. “I will be good.”

Danarius hummed, running a finger under Fenris’s collar and pressing his fingers to the markings at the base of his throat. His lyrium came alive, burning and bright. Fenris swallowed a whimper.

“Of course you will,” Danarius said. “Because you know what happens when you aren’t, don’t you pet?”

Fenris could not think of an answer before Danarius squeezed, cutting off his air, nails digging into his skin and…

_“No!”_ Fenris said.

The scene flickered. He thought he could see the mists of the fade behind the walls of the Tevinter tapestries.

_“Out,”_ Fenris hissed, ignoring Danarius’s hands on him. Ignoring the pain. _“This is not real.”_

The fog of the fade reappeared and Danarius was gone. All that was left was the silence. The silence and the shadows of trees that were not trees. Of mountains that were not mountains. Of a city in the distance that did not shift, did not change, even if everything about them did.

“How was that, demon?” Fenris said, breathing hard. “Is that how it is done in this cursed place?”

But Cole didn’t answer. Fenris lifted his eyes, searching for the strange tendril of a boy, and found him curled up by the trunk of a false-tree.

“He hurt you because it made him feel powerful,” Cole said. “He hit you because it made his hand feel like more than a hand. _They will see his power._ You were a curse and a blessing. You were special and that made him scared.”

“You do not need to tell me what Danarius was,” Fenris said.

Cole shook his head, his lost eyes settling on Fenris’s. “I’m not talking about your master,” he said.

A wisp appeared out of the thicket of trees. It was small, this half-formed spirit, but it moved fast. It darted between shadows and reappeared just paces away, the suggestion of silver eyes flashing in the dark.

“Then, who?” Fenris asked.

The shade approached, the silhouette growing clearer. The outline of a dress, a bow in the hair, the slim feet of a child.

“Spirit?”

Fenris’s heart hammered hard. He didn’t have time to grab his sword and he was not able to fade step here.

Cole’s eyes went wide, finding the wisp in an instant. He stood in a flash, whipping his knife out of its sheath, and struck.

They sank back into darkness.

Fenris found for the first time he was in a place he didn’t recognize. Nothing about the mess of this home was familiar. Shattered glass littered the floor beside the evidence of rats gnawing at the bottoms of the chairs. Wine was spilled across the table and a foul stench of rot filled the air.

He had never been here before, but he knew desperation when he saw it. It was a sickness that spread from the foundation of this decrepit building to its outer walls.

Suddenly, a crash and strangled cry echoed from upstairs. Fenris jumped over the mess on the floor and climbed the steps to a small second floor. There, he found a pale, burly man holding up a small boy by the neck, shouting so hard his whole face turned a sickly red.

“Useless boy,” the man spat. “Evil rat, I should have killed you long ago.”

Fenris stepped closer. The boy… he had the same large, sad eyes and limp hair as…

“Let go,” Cole said, straining against the man’s larger body.

“You want to be let go?” the man said. He hefted Cole up and threw him down so he landed on the corner of an overturned crate. Blood poured quickly from the gash in his side. “You and your sister, both. Foul creatures. You don’t deserve to live.”

It was only then Fenris noticed the girl spread out on the bed, hair in tangles, crying softly. Bruises bloomed on her forearms as far up as her ragged clothes showed.

“Let her be!” Cole cried. “Please.”

“Don’t beg for your witch sister,” the man said, pulling his arm back for another attack.

Fenris grabbed the man’s arm before he could try. Before he could remember that this was someone else’s memory. A fear that was not his. He reached out and was briefly surprised when his fingers found solid cloth and flesh. But by then, all that mattered was to end this.

“Who’re you?” the man drawled, turning wildly on his heel. His breath stank of liquor and his eyes looked sunken and dark.

“To you?” Fenris said. “Simply a dream.” He struck the man across the temple and wrestled him back. He was large and swung his weight like a weapon, pulling Fenris to a knee. They struggled down to the ground, Fenris sliding out of the man’s grasp only to be kicked in the stomach as he tried to twist his arm back.

“Cole,” Fenris said. “End this.”

“No, no,” he was saying, gripping his own shoulders and curling his knees to his chest. “It wasn’t going to happen again. No, no, no—”

_“Cole!”_ Fenris said. He had finally managed to hold the man down, knee to his back and hand to the back of his head, but he couldn’t keep him still for long. Fenris didn’t have the weight of a warrior in hand-to-hand combat. It was not what he was made for. “Spirit! Do something, now!”

The walls of the house flickered. Behind the wood was the stone of something like a dungeon, cold and wet and empty. Behind that, when Cole dug his fingers into his arms and shut his eyes tight, was the great towers of Skyhold.

And the next moment, they were back on the forest trail. Fenris found himself on the ground, holding down nothing, and Cole was still wrapped up in himself a few paces away.

What was this spirit boy? A thing that warped the fade by accident, not unlike he had done himself. He was supposed to be his guide, not another lost soul.

But then again, he had never seen a spirit show regret. Never witnessed a demon apologize or an abomination swayed from its purpose. Fenris watched Cole now, shaking his head slowly as if to wipe away the thoughts of… of what? Of a nightmare he never wanted to live again?

He knew how that felt.

“You still bleed,” Fenris said.

Cole touched his side and flinched, red coating his fingers. “We are solid here,” he said, voice coming out in a whisper. “And it is wrong. Wicked, wrecked, written in flesh. It stays.”

“But spirits do not bleed,” Fenris said. “In the fade, you should—”

“I _am_ a spirit. But I am also Cole,” he said, though this time, his voice was weak like he was not so sure. His blood left streaks in the stone where he laid his hands to stand.

This boy, he was not an abomination like Anders, Varric assured him of that. He was nobody possessed. He did not even call himself Compassion. He was something else.

Some _one_ who bleeds. Someone who is scared.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris finds he hates gilded castles. Cole tells knock-knock jokes.

Fenris was learning. He kept his mind sharp, like an arrow always pointing north. The lines of their path straight, toward the center of this spirit’s land. Whoever it was, they would know this place. They would know how to get to Nightmare, and to Hawke.

But now, they needed to just keep walking, ignoring the wisps that followed them.

“Knock, knock,” Cole ventured.

Fenris side-eyed him. It was not unkind, this look. _Try to listen,_ was in his head. _Try, like you did with Hawke. He was not the mage you first thought. This spirit…?_

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Fenris said. “Who’s there?”

“Tree.”

“Tree, who?”

Cole thought. “Oh,” he said. “Actually, trees don’t have hands to knock with, do they? Can I try again?”

Fenris raised his eyebrows. “Very well,” he said, keeping his gaze on the road.

The landscape was growing stranger, trees reaching further up into the sky and ancient rubble stacking into haphazard structures that would never had stood in the waking world. The mist was slowly lifting, allowing them to see further. Breathe in the green-tinted sky. In the distance, a gilded castle stood, glinting in the sunlight. Unlike the Black City, still visible to their right, this castle was getting closer as they walked on.

“Knock, knock,” Cole said.

“Who’s there?”

“The fade.”

Fenris frowned. “The fade who?”

“The fade knocks because we think it does and if we give it hands, it will have hands.”

Fenris was silent. Cole probably did it wrong again. 

“This is Varric’s doing, isn’t it?” Fenris said.

Cole was surprised. “How did you know?”

“It is just like him to take a liking to strange creatures carrying mysterious stories,” Fenris said. “And teach them to make others laugh.”

“He speaks to the voices in his head,” Cole said. “But they sometimes speak back with the voices of his friends. It makes it easier for him to tell the tales.”

“Or, possibly makes it easier for him to let go,” Fenris said.

“Yes,” Cole said. “But that’s what makes him sad.”

Fenris nodded. A wisp on their periphery wandered closer and they both turned to look. It acted like a shy thing, skittish.

“Come,” Fenris said to it, holding out a weaponless hand. “I know what you want.”

The wisp flitted forward, twisting upon itself as it approached. Cole shrank back, the last journey into memory still raw in his mind. Fenris, though, was more confident in than he'd seen him here yet. The wisp twisted around them both, slowly, as if unsure. Finally, it touched the tip of Fenris’s finger and they fell…

It was the Hanged Man, as Cole could recognize now. Fenris had just stepped inside, shaking himself off from the rain before climbing the stairs to Varric’s rooms.

“...and then these Carta thugs, huge lackies—or, huge for a dwarf I should say—were waiting for us around the corner. I thought we were done for. About fifty of them standing between Hawke and the only way out of the caves…”

“There were twenty of them, at most,” Fenris said. The crowd that had gathered around Varric turned.

“Elf, don’t ruin the story!”

“Twenty,” Fenris said. “With… very large barrels of explosives.”

“So _that’s_ the ruckus we heard comin’ out of the ass-end of darktown,” one of the men said, throwing back a mouthful of ale.

Varric smiled. “It would have been much worse if Fenris here hadn’t stepped in,” he said, sweeping his hands out wide. “I don’t know if you know about the _abilities_ this elf carries under his skin. Magister-branded, he escaped the gloom of Tevinter slavery by slipping through his master’s grasp. That same power he used against the carta that night, ghosting behind their defenses and ripping into the hearts—”

“Ripping?” a woman said, trying to hide her look of disgust.

“Would you rather I murdered them gently?” Fenris said.

“Oh, that _is_ better,” Varric said. “The elf sneaks behind the advancing line like an assassin, his hand nothing more than a chill that runs through the hearts of his victims. They are dead before they can scream…”

Fenris sighed. “You’re writing this down?”

“For posterity!” Varric said. “And hope of future sales.”

“Dwarf…” Fenris said and smiled like he liked the way that sounded as a story. Just a story.

* * *

“Knock, knock,” Cole said.

“Who’s there?” Fenris said.

They both looked up at the glittering tower before them.

“Us,” Cole said.

Cole wasn’t sure if the door would open on its own, or if the spirit would great them, or if he would have to use his flesh and blood hands to truly knock.

Fenris unsheathed his sword. “And what awaits us?”

“I cannot tell,” Cole said. “I try to listen, but all I hear is… not silence, but an echo. Or, it is like hearing a mirror. Again and again, never a thought, but a reflection of me.”

“Maybe there is nothing.”

“No,” Cole said. “There is something. Something powerful.”

They didn’t knock.

The door creaked open at a touch. Inside looked much how it felt. How it sounded. Mirrors of gold leaf, through some magic of the fade, reflecting sunlight from windows he could not see. Twisting columns rose out of the ground, holding up a grand dome ceiling. It felt as if there should be flowers growing out of these golden branches, but instead the beams tapered into nothing. Into sharp points aimed at the sky.

It was silent as they proceeded, no wisp or whisper followed them. Hall after hall, mirror after mirror. Doors opened onto grand ballrooms, each as empty as the last. Nothing more, until Cole felt something. A stirring within the walls.

Almost like laughing.

Cole put a gentle hand on Fenris’s shoulder, holding him back from turning toward the next corridor.

“Something listens,” Cole said. He reached for it, the thoughts that did not stay still. They bounced, curious and eager. “And it is… eager.”

_Oh, how interesting!_

Cole and Fenris both jumped back at the voice, suddenly booming around them.

_The song never finished. You forgot the end before the applause. It didn’t feel right on the tongue, but you only noticed when you stopped for breath. “Freedom should not feel like this.” Lovely, lovely!_

“Show yourself!” Fenris said, baring his teeth. Just as he always did before a fight. Cole saw, he calmed himself and reached into that part of him that still felt like…

_A little wolf. Chains, or no._

The voice did laugh at that, and the sound was carried around them as if on a breeze.

“Please,” Cole said. “We don’t wish to intrude. We simply wish to find the realm of Nightmare.”

“You truly think this spirit will be of any help?” Fenris hissed at Cole.

_Nightmare, night… mare… master and maker of lost things, cherished things, things that burn, oh! Light up the sky with the screams of… no, further, further! Mercy, miracle, magic… not the magic, but the one who makes it._

“See?” Fenris said. “It does not listen.”

Cole shook his head. “It listens too closely.”

The echo of his emotions he'd felt since he stepped in reverberated stronger. Sharper. A pointed dagger of guilt and mirth.  _Listen!_ it said.  _Listen, lead to the leftovers... Cole! Ha, is that what you are? Cole, cold, coward because you can't face what you can no longer be. Me._

"This spirit," Cole said. "It is Compassion." 

Fenris spun as if trying to find the body this voice belonged to, but there was none. Only mirrors of gold.

_There is so much in you, creatures too much of the waking world. I could fill my palace on your hurts. On the things even you have chosen to forget. But I can find them. I can dig and dig…_

An image appeared on the far wall as the surface dissolved into something that looked more like water. Like a pond turned on its side. As clear as a fish coming to meet the surface for a mouthful of breadcrumbs, Cole could see a memory take shape.

A dark-haired elf, face clear of vallaslin, stepped into view, carrying a basket of clothes for washing. He stood by the door as he watched an older female elf with his same hair and his same curve of chin kneeling by the tub of water. He noticed how her hands were rubbing raw, blood leaking where the skin cracked at the joints. He bit his tongue when she slowly stood, a hand on her knee and the other at her back because he knew that empty platitudes would do nothing for her pain. Still, even through her discomfort, she smiled when she saw him.

“Oh, you can put those down over there,” she said, pointing to the corner with the ever-enlarging pile of linens.

He did as he was told, fighting to avoid her gaze. “Master says he needs more help in the kitchens for the dinner tonight,” he said. “I requested that I take your place so you may rest for—”

“No, my sweet Leto,” his mother said, a hand to his cheek. The calluses scraped where she touched. “You were chosen for guards training. That is the only thing you must worry yourself with now.”

“But you cannot go on without—”

She shook her head. “We are honored to have our lives so laid out for us and we must follow our fate where it takes us. Tonight, for me, that is in the kitchens,” she said. “Remember, there are those who have harder. Who do not have food at the end of the day or a roof under which to sleep.”

Leto leaned into her touch for a moment before turning to exit, his face set. Cole could tell he believed her. That the world was just that simple. 

 

As the wall solidified back into gold, Fenris growled. He struck his sword so hard against the ground a shudder rebounded through his entire body. Cole felt his rage. Felt it more than he normally would have, listening with half his mind as he usually did. This was something deeper.

“What are you playing at, spirit?” Fenris shouted up into the ceiling. “These are not my memories anymore. That is not me.”

_But I do not understand. You are what you have experienced, are you not, Leto? That hand still holds a sword—back, back, turn, swing—your muscles remember. Why not all of you?_

“Because he is also what he chooses to forget,” Cole said.

Its laugh was swift and harsh. _And what of you? A spirit, or a human? Did you choose to be good at neither? You belong neither here nor there. Nobody will cherish you, love you, thank you for what you do._

“I don’t matter,” Cole said.

_Lies! Cradled hurt, “not me, not me,” you make mistakes and call it learning, but it is all you are. A mistake._

The opposite wall now faded to silver, a touch sent ripples across its edge. Another memory. Another pain. This time, Cole’s.

It was a dungeon he knew well. He walked it every night, without a flicker of a flame to guide him. All he needed was the silence. And within the silence, the desperate thoughts of the imprisoned. It was almost too much for him to handle. The smell and sight was enough, blood and bile, no more than a pile of straw in the corner for a bed. But even if he shut his eyes, held his hands over his face, and ignored all the rest, the voices in his head would not quiet.

He waited, impatient on his toes, for the last of the guards left on their rounds to continue on their way. They could not see him, but they would see what he would do. He would see the gate unlock with a click and the girl within shrink away from the sound.

Eyes found him. _Saw him._ He relished the feeling for a moment before closing in on the child. She starving, her collar bone jutting out from beneath the rags that covered her body. Her eyes were heavy as she found him but quickly shifted. Surprise. Question. Fear. Fear. Fear.

Her voice was rough when she spoke. “Don’t hurt me,” she said. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t control it. I didn’t mean to use it!”

Cole inhaled that emotion, everything this small mage had directed at him. He wouldn’t slip away and become nothing. Those eyes made him real. That whimper and the way she tightened her body up into a ball to escape him.

“I will not hurt you,” Cole said, raising his dagger. “You will never hurt again.”

She hid her face in her hair, hands up in defense. No, that was not right. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

“I will make it all go away,” he said. “But you need to look at me.”

Her hands balled into shaking fists, but she still would not look. _No!_ Here, he would not be invisible.

Cole put the blade to her neck. “Look at me!” he said into her ear. She did, and at that moment, Cole slid the dagger across her vein. The blood came and everything she had been came pouring out with it. He filled himself with what she was and he knew he would not fade away.

_Isn’t it fascinating?_ The voice said as the gold returned to the wall and the dungeon disappeared. _You may have left the fade, but you could not leave your nature._

Cole dropped to his knees. “I was wrong,” he explained, seeking Fenris’s gaze because he could not talk straight to the voice who had no face. “I am not that anymore.”

“You killed mages?” Fenris asked.

“Not because they were mages,” Cole said. “But because they were hurting.”

_You did it to feel whole,_  Compassion said. _If that was Fenris you felt from the fade, cold and alone and bleeding, would you look like him now? Worn his face and called yourself his name?_ It showed them both an image of Fenris on the ground of some Tevinter cell, his markings new, raised, and angry. _Or, better yet, would you have pitied him? Killed him to end his suffering?_

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Cole said. “I couldn’t have known. I had wanted to help.”

“I am in no place to judge you,” Fenris said, though there was an unspoken _demon_ spat at the end. 

“No,” Cole said, feeling all the tentative trust Fenris had put in him so far slip back into hatred. “No, please believe me!”

This desperation, this pain he was feeling was his own. Not borrowed vengeance from a mage once called Cole, or hurt he could embody and take away. _Cole_ had learned. _Cole_ had chosen that there were memories not meant for him to take. He had chosen to be human.

But he could not shake all he was before.

_Finally understand?_ The voice said. It sounded closer now. _We two are alike, though you have stuttered. Stunted the path. Taken too much, or too little, and failed to make a world of it._

“Compassion,” Cole said. “Is not selfish.”

_Ha! You were interesting, weren’t you?_ A figure stepped out of the walls, shaking gold dust from its shoulders. _You want the same as me. Tender, sensitive, Cole. Mercy is not the same as Feeling. We Feel. But you work to make those feelings disappear._

“To help.”

The figure shook out its hair and Cole could see which form it had taken: his sister. No, not his. He only knew a memory. It was the original Cole’s little sister. She looked herself over. _Oh, what fun! Love, laughter… “listen, you must not say a word. You must not let father know…” what a wonderful form. So many emotions. Can I keep her?_

“She is not mine to give,” Cole said.

_Then I will keep all of you._ Compassion said. _You will fill my halls with the whims of your heart._

In a blink, Compassion shifted and grew, hair darkening and voice deepening. _Is this not what you want, Fenris?_ Compassion said with Hawke’s face. _Do you not want to stay with me here, forever?_

“Back, demon,” Fenris said, though his fingers twitched in want. “I don’t want another memory. A lie. The fade has given me enough of those.”

_Aren’t they enough to please?_

“They will never be,” Fenris said.

_Then, what?_ Compassion said in whisper, Hawke’s lips drawing close to Fenris’s ear. _If you can never have him again, isn’t this a better alternative than returning home alone?_

“Stop it,” Cole said. Want, desire, wretched sadness flowing through him. “You’re hurting him!”

_Come now, Fen. You always pull that face, but you know I’m always right. It can be just as we planned, a quiet life by the seaside. No more running, for either of us. No more proving yourself._

Fenris’s lip curled and Cole could feel regret rip through him.

Cole could not control what Fenris decided here. He couldn’t tempt him with untruths. This spirit was stronger than he, in his own realm. He could feel the war in Fenris’s mind. The pleasure, the hope. The despair, always threatening.

Fenris turned away. “I betrayed Hawke once in the fade,” he said. “I promised I would never do that again.”

The spirit would not take that. In its world, the playplace of other’s thoughts, it could not tell past from future. It couldn’t know what it meant for Fenris to say, no. For Fenris to look away. To take his attention _away._ It was more than Compassion would be able to take.

The visage of Hawke melted into a need Cole had never seen on the living man’s face. It transformed him into something unrecognizable. Something terrifying. It took the staff off of its back and swung it around, pointing it directly at the back of Fenris’s head.

_No! You must Look. At. Me!_ The spirit raged.

The feeling from the dungeons came back to Cole. The feeling he may never be real. The emptiness within him that would only ever be filled by the paltry scraps of other's emotions. He willed it away, but it did not leave. It came, stronger and stronger. Closer, with the spirit that advanced on him. 

Cole felt it there, in Compassion. Not  _his_ fear, but that spirit's. It wanted nothing more than to be connected. No, to be the most important thing in the world.

Even if that meant destroying everything else.

The spirit was right, this was no mercy. This was theft of the only thing that made them whole.

“He is not yours,” Cole said, stepping into the spirit’s attack, taking the brunt of the fade-made rush of energy. It cut him deep and threw him back, gasping. Fenris twisted back toward the fight, but by then, the spirit had already set its attention back to Cole.

_Pathetic exile,_ it said, shifting again from Hawke’s image to Cole’s little sister. _Un-made. Lost. Thoughts so twisted you can’t find your way home._

Cole stood on shaking legs, grasping his daggers and readying himself for the next attack, then paused. He listened, eyes widening. Understanding.

“Oh,” Cole said. Sadness taking hold of him.

_Oh?_

“You’ve wished so much for the comfort of other’s thoughts that you’ve lost your own,” Cole said.

_What?_

“You’ve lost who you are,” Cole said, blades up but not intending to use them. “You’ve forgotten, just like me.”

The form of his little sister rushed at him, mouth open in a strangled cry. It jumped at him, swinging her small fists and grasping the front of Cole’s shirt. _Say what you mean!_

“You are not Compassion,” Cole said. “You are Hunger.”

The fists immediately loosened and the spirit dropped to the ground. _No,_ it whispered, looking over its own body, shimmering back and forth from false human skin to smooth golden surface. It twisted, bunched, and stretched, running through body after body. A groan escaped its ever-shifting mouth. _You lie!_

“I know you can feel I do not.”

The spirit shrieked, grasping at itself like his skin truly was a shirt he could remove. Digging deeper and deeper until he revealed his true form underneath. _Care, concern, could I not have…?_

“Compassion would want to help,” Cole insisted. “Help us find Hawke.”

_No!_ the spirit spat.  _Compassion is pity. It is better than the bearer..._

"So, pity us," Cole said. "Pity the lost, looking for love. We must find Nightmare." 

A wicked and wrong sound escaped the spirit then. A laugh, perhaps. _Nightmare?_ it said. _Isn’t it obvious?_

“Tell us,” Cole said.

_Both of you, so eager to hide, vanish, ghost out of your fears._ The spirit looked up, eyes mismatched and misty. _To find Nightmare, you must_ look _for Nightmare. You cannot hide those hurts anymore._

“Hide the hurts?” Fenris said.

The spirit pointed across the hall to a new door that had appeared out of the reflective surface of the wall. _Follow them,_ the spirit said. _I am not Hunger. I am not Hunger! And so they are free. Follow them._

Behind the shimmering surface of the door, Cole could see shades cross and recross. Dark wisps, leading them to, he hoped, Nightmare’s realm.

_Out!_ The spirit said when Fenris and Cole hesitated. _You are too loud. Too loud! If I cannot keep you, you cannot torture me so._

The door opened to Cole’s touch and they went through.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fearlings bring memories. Fenris and Cole follow.

“Knock, knock.”

As fiercely as Fenris would deny it later, he appreciated the chatter from this strange boy. Between the intrusion of unwanted memories and the ache of his feet on the unforgiving path, it grounded him. It was the thing that never changed in this forever changing landscape. That, he supposed, and the Black City always in the distance. Though that he ignored with more intent than even the flashes of his past that flickered in and out as they went on. If that was once the Maker’s seat, it meant one thing. If that was just the ruins of the hubris of past Magisters, another. Whatever it was, he would not think about it. Cole’s strange existence was an easier truth than that.

“Who’s there?”

“Varric.”

This one was new. “Varric, who?”

Cole was silent for a beat. Two. Fenris turned to look at him and found his face pinched, eyebrows pinched in concentration.

“Varric would be better at this,” Cole finally said.

And without meaning to, Fenris chuckled. He swallowed it quickly, clearing his throat and returning his gaze to the road. “You may be improving,” he said.

“I appreciate you saying that,” Cole said, a smile in his voice.

The memories kept coming, just like in the realm of Compassion. The smaller fearlings were leading the way to Nightmare, yes, but they were sending flashes of past hurts as they did. Buzzing annoyances whispering in their ears. Little pinpricks in their step.

From Cole, he saw endless dark passageways and crumbling dungeons. Screams of his victims. It was the Spire, Cole had explained. Before the mage rebellion tore it apart. _Alone, alone. Nobody can see me._ They shifted and changed, showing all the ways he chose the mages that fell to his blade. Fenris now understood what Cole had meant when they had first arrived. Other’s fears could be loud things.

Fenris saw the disappointed face of a male mage. _Rhys,_ Cole’s mind supplied. This mage turning away from him. Walking away.

He saw a Templar woman, dying on the water-logged ground of a sewage tunnel.

“Evangeline didn’t die,” Cole explained as they came up for air between these memories, ever walking onwards when they could still see in front of them. “Or, she was dead, until she wasn’t.”

Fenris didn’t ask what that meant.

He also saw flashes of Hunger now, a new and raw fear that Cole couldn’t contain. Fenris watched Cole twist his hands over and over in the tattered bottom of his shirt. Fingers, nimble with the daggers, grew clumsy and timid in the knot they made of themselves. The collar of his armor was torn from where the spirit had attacked him, a fresh wound barely visible on his shoulder. Guilt. Was this a feeling that could only be used with a human? Fenris took a breath.

“That was not you,” Fenris said with a glance back. He could no longer see the grand castle. “Compassion or Hunger, neither was you.”

Cole was silent a moment, hands still working. “I was afraid of being changed, once,” he said. “But I am already changed. I cannot become Hunger because I am no longer Compassion. I am more.”  

Fenris looked ahead, into the quickly darkening sky, and wished he could feel the same.

* * *

Cole didn’t think Fenris noticed how he was rubbing his wrists where the lyrium snaked through his skin. Or, how he shrank back from the light touch of Cole’s fingertips when he was trying to get his attention. The pain lasted, lingered from magic-infused knives dug into his flesh years and years ago. He was strapped down, biting his tongue so hard blood ran down his throat just so he wouldn’t scream. _I will be good. I will be good._

It was a thought that echoed through the Tevinter-constructed metal and stone hallways, on his way to meet his master. _I will be good._

Hallways that ended in blood, life draining at Fenris’s hand. Assassinations, they were called by others, though for Fenris, it was just another order. The same as bringing wine at the end of a meal or giving his body to an honored guest.

Hallways that ended in bedrooms, breath caught in Fenris’s throat. _I will be good._ Love wasn’t something he wanted call it, but he didn’t know any better. Didn’t know what the touch of a lover felt without the fear. Didn’t know what the kindness of family did to the weight of his heart. That was the worst of it. Not Danarius’s anger, not his punishments. It was his love. The very fact that Fenris had trusted him.

Hallways and wishes that would lead to Hawke, Cole knew. The wishing was the journey. But before that...

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” Fenris’s voice was rough, restless.

“Fearling.”

“Fearling who?”

“Fearling five paces behind you, to your left.”

Fenris twisted, sword in hand, and attacked. They fell.

* * *

Fenris found himself back in the Amaranthine alianage, a mix of armor and rags that would not offend his neighbors draped across his shoulders. As much as he loathed to admit it, being acquaintances with Merrill for all those years taught him much about this world. The way these elves clung to pasts that were not theirs and twisted stories to match their egos. They were noble, in their way. A fragile nobility granted by nobody but their peers.

Was it preferable to the nobility of Kirkwall’s hightown? Perhaps. Nobler than the Magisters at the very least. They stole only from themselves, not from those they deemed weaker than them.

But it was frustrating, nonetheless, to wake day after day under the watchful eyes of their Keeper. A Keeper who would not listen to logic, no matter how many times Fenris explained it to her. The disappearances, the fabricated letters, the dreams the young elves had of escaping from this prison in all but name. The shipments that arrived at the port and the ships that left carrying their children. All this and the Keeper would not listen.

Fenris sighed, swiping a hand through his knotted hair. He needed to cut it, it had grown too long.

He walked to his lodgings, pacing the same path as he had for the last two months, when a young elf caught his arm. “Fenris, ser. That man is by the gates again.”

Fenris turned, hand at his heart like a silly maiden. “Thank you, Ada,” he said. “Now go on, it will be dark soon.”

“Yes, ser.”

Fenris strode quickly to the entrance, trying not to let his thoughts fall from his lips. Trying not to think that it had been more than twenty nights since he had last seen his love.

“Hawke,” he said when he slipped outside the alienage.

Hawke took Fenris into his arms, but his touch only lingered a moment. That smell—sweat and dirt and leather. It was more home to him than any wall surrounding him. The mere memory of this was enough to sustain him.

When they parted, Hawke’s eyes stayed fixed on the ground. His arms crossed over his chest.

“What is wrong?” Fenris asked.

“Nothing,” Hawke said, too quickly. The lamps were starting to be lit along the main road as the sky dimmed and the way they flickered with the wind made the shadows around them dance. “Did you know, Anders hadn’t cleaned up all the darkspawn out there. Poor neighbors, if you ask me.”

“Hawke—”

“There are ships on the coast,” Hawke said. “Tevinter-make, heading to port. You told me to tell you when they were spotted so you could be prepared.”

Fenris frowned. “You are well aware that I can read,” he said. “Why not send a carrier as you usually do?”

Hawke’s lips quivered like he was trying to smile. Trying so hard to shrug off the questions and worries. “Do I need a reason to meet such a handsome elf? Look at us, sneaking off at sundown like young lovers.”

“I know from many first-hand experiences you are incapable of sneaking.”

“Ah, but it always ends up well in the end, does it not?” Hawke said.

“I thought you were further north,” Fenris said. He had dreams of that small cabin up in the hills. Of the day he could leave this wretched city and return to Hawke’s bed. Wake him up with the sunrise and tell him they could move on. Together. That day when he would feel just the slightest bit lighter.

“And wouldn’t you know it, the north filled up with all these apostates,” Hawke said. “How inconsiderate of them, there was a perfectly good apostate already haunting those woods.”

“Did they engage you?” Fenris asked.

“No. But they—” Hawke paused like he heard something. His shoulders were tense and his hand opening and closing like he wanted to grab his staff. Fenris listened, but could not hear a thing. “Unfortunately the demons they summoned did. No harm came, though! Look at me, all in one piece. Even got a horse out of the deal. I’ve set up camp a little outside their territory for now.”

Fenris’s lip curled. He didn’t need to think of these apostates as well as the slavers. “I hope you ended their misery,” he said.

Hawke looked up, finally meeting Fenris’s eyes. There was an intensity there that Fenris had almost forgotten. A danger that he could not touch. “I cannot imagine what they endured,” he said. His eyes searching as if consuming every inch of Fenris through the wandering light. “What led them to that path.”

“It is pride, nothing more,” Fenris said. He wished to touch Hawke’s cheek, but there was something in his eye that told him, no. Somehow, he was too far away. “You are not like that. You would never become like them.”

“Such faith you put in a mage,” Hawke said.

“Not any mage.”

Hawke hummed, a rumbling sound like some faraway storm. “Not any mage,” he repeated.

A clattering of voices rose from the street beyond and the smell of food on a stove, rich meats and fresh pastries, sweetened the air. It reminded him of the dinners Hawke’s mother would prepare in Hightown, before she had died. When peace was a fireplace and quiet lessons on penmanship.

“Stay,” Fenris said. “Please, for the night.”

Hawke said, “but the alienage wouldn’t—”

“At the tavern by the crossroads,” Fenris said.

Hawke looked as if he would agree, lips parted for a moment before he swallowed. He looked away and all the focus he had brought on Fenris vanished. “My poor horse, she’ll be so lost without me, tied up out there. And the rain will come and—”

“She will survive.”

“—we both have much to attend to in the morning,” Hawke finished. “Your ship will dock and I must meet with a Gray Warden contact of mine by the coast.”

 _Look at me, steady me,_ Fenris didn’t say. _If you ordered me to please you, I would not say no._ But he was silent. He simply nodded and turned back to the alienage’s entrance, leaving Hawke in the scent of other’s dinners.

He walked away without looking back.

And, many days later, a letter instead found its way into Fenris’s hands.

_By the time you read this, I will be two weeks gone. Do not follow. It is the blood on my hands I must wash away, as this work is for you. I would not take you from it. -GH_

* * *

Cole lived between Hawke’s false deaths. Bloody mistakes from the past and futures that could not be.

“The fearlings lie,” Cole said to Fenris, trying to get him to shake the rubble off his shirt as the chantry explodes again and again, leaving bodies on the streets. One, with a streak of red across his nose.

“These are not lies,” Fenris said.

Cole saw, again and again, Hawke’s throat cut by slavers on the coast. Hawke falling to the Arishok. Hawke’s body ripping apart as electricity surges from a rebel mage’s staff.

“They do not know regret from doubt,” Cole said, putting a fist to his stomach to keep himself from becoming sick. Hawke’s mangled body, decomposing on edge of a Sundermount cliff, flickered and vanished at the edge of his vision. _I will be good, for him,_ still lingered in Fenris’s mind.  “They pull from deep down, where waking and sleeping are not so clear.”

“It means we are getting closer to Nightmare,” Fenris said.

Cole closed his eyes and rubbed his hands hard enough to feel the burn of skin against skin. “That may be. But you do not need to make them into blades to bleed yourself with.”

* * *

Fenris found himself by the cliffs of Amaranthine. He breathed in the salt-laden air, feeling almost nostalgic for his time in Kirkwall, when the world felt smaller. Almost understandable. Not like this churning sea on the other side, endless and inescapable.

He felt a warm kiss on his neck, barely there. More an exhale than the touch of lips. “You’re leaving,” Fenris said.

He let him go.

Fenris let him go.

 

Fenris stood, again, on the cliffs of Amaranthine, Hawke at his back. The salt stung his eyes and left his clothes crusted and damp.

“You’re leaving.”

Hawke didn’t respond. Fenris only felt the warmth against his spine disappear as Hawke stepped away. Fenris balled up his fists, crumpling the parchment in his left hand. He spun on his heel.

“Why?” Fenris said, letting his voice fly into the wind. He should have done this earlier, instead of swallowing his words and trusting that Hawke would always come back for him. “Tell me!”

But Hawke walked away, as he always did. Walked away and didn’t say a word.

 

Fenris found himself, again, looking over the cliffs of Amaranthine. Thinking about how far it would be to fall. He watched Hawke walk away from him, and somehow the wind didn’t touch him. It didn’t make his hair, just as long as Fenris’s, whip against his face or his stride falter.

“It isn’t your war!” Fenris shouted, not embarrassed by the way his voice cracks. “You don’t _owe_ them anything!”

 _Not like you owe me,_ Fenris couldn’t get himself to say, despite it all. _After being good, for so long, for you. Is this my punishment?_

Hawke never said thing.

 

Fenris found himself, livid, on the cliffs of Amaranthine. Chains are not the only things keeping a slave to his master. Over oceans and over time, Fenris himself had thought himself loyal to the one who’d named him little wolf. He was _good_ to his master. He had still killed for his master. He had waited and waited for him to return because he trusted the one who…

_No._

Hawke walked away as Danarius had walked away. And one day, someday, Fenris would get his reward, only if he waited for long enough. Killed and killed until the trail of blood dragged behind him. He could point to it and say, _See? Look at what I’ve done. I’ve been so good._

And one day, he’d be able to rest. Rest in the arms of the one who he’d worked so hard for.

Hawke, no. He wasn’t his master. He couldn’t be. He wouldn’t leave him waiting on the shores of an unknown land.

* * *

Cole found Fenris standing on the edge of a perilous cliff, wind buffering his hair back so it looked like the wings of a great white seabird. A storm was threatening the sea. He could feel the rumble under his feet and a shadow darkened the water. He’d been on this cliff before, in dreams. In memories. Fenris’s memories.

Fenris turned and Cole followed him up the hill behind them. It was like they were following a feeling more than a path. A hint, like a scent dissipating into the air. They walked into the mist and into the thick pine forest beyond. Fenris stepped lightly, and Cole wondered if this was what he was like on the hunt. An assassin more than a warrior in many ways.

Finally, at the end of the trail, they came upon a wooden cabin. Smoke curled from a chimney and the flickering light of a fire made the small windows glow. Fenris paused for only a moment before opening the door.

Inside, Hawke sat at a haphazard desk, scrawling a letter onto a scrap of parchment. The ink bled and spattered and Hawke’s fingers were stained from what Cole could guess were many tries. Many words on many pages, strewn on the floor at his feet. Hawke didn’t seem to notice their entry. The only sign he sensed anything at all was a quick flick of his eyes to the floor by the door, before directing his attention back on the letter.

“This isn’t my memory,” Fenris said.

Cole shifted on his feet. “The fearlings react to our thoughts. Desires, fears…”

“No,” Fenris said. “I’ve imagined this place hundreds of times before, but never like this. This isn’t _my_ imagining.”

Cole turned to the vision of Hawke sitting at his desk. Hawke, scribbling the same line over and over as if he was stuck in a moment. Repeating. Reliving. But this must be someone’s memory, or he’d be able to feel a third being in this place…

Oh, but the feeling! The whisper they followed here.

Fenris’s thoughts were loud. _It can’t be. He would see me. He would wrap me in his arms and…_ but then, something underneath that. Distinct, but so quiet Cole had to focus to pick them out but they were still only flickers. Faded images and pieces of words. They were drowned out by the static of dreams around them like Hawke had done everything he could to make it so.

“He is real,” Cole said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating of this fic may be going up in the next installment...


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris reunites with Hawke. In a way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating is going up for some classy intimacy: physical, emotional, pathological... 
> 
> Encouraging comments are wonderful! This is honestly the first time I'm posting as I write, so it 100% keeps me motivated. Especially in a fandom that may not be as active. (Why did I wait 5 years after playing DA:I to write my first dragon age fic??)

“Hawke,” Fenris said, again and again. “Amatus, you’re alive. You’re alive.”

Hawke did not stir. He kept his eyes ahead, hands on his parchment. When Fenris pulled on his arm, it followed like a doll’s, dropping to his side. Only when Fenris turned Hawke’s face towards his did Cole notice a hesitation. The persistent way he tried to avoid Fenris’s gaze. _Can’t…_ echoed softly in him. It was the most Cole could catch before it faded away.

“Hawke. Please, we’ve found you. We’ve found you. Look at me,” Fenris begged. Hawke didn’t answer.

Cole remembered what Dorian had warned them about the way out of the fade. They needed a mage and a connection. The connection was his, Cole knew the step and slide of the way in and out of the fade, though he wished he could scrub that feeling from his mind. The mage though? For Hawke and Fenris both to follow, Hawke would need to cooperate. He would need to raise his staff and say the words. 

Fenris touched Hawke’s cheek lightly. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He must believe we are demons,” Cole said. “He blocks his mind like many mages in the fade to avoid temptation. Avoid possession.”

“We are not demons.”

“There is no way he can know,” Cole said. He looked around this dream-cabin, noting the spider webs in the corners and empty bottles of ale under the bed. “This is Nightmare’s realm still. What is Hawke afraid of?”

Fenris frowned. He opened his mouth, like he wanted to speak, but hesitated, reconsidering. “The death of his family, though that has already come and gone.”

Cole looked again at Hawke, eyes dull. “That is not it.”

“Hawke, love,” Fenris tried again, desperation seeping from his lips. “Please. _Please._ We’re here to help, but you must wake. You must look at us.”

Cole heard no response from the mage. No flicker of a mind underneath after that first whisper. Instead, it was as if there were a hole where his soul should be. A being in itself, twisting and churning, so dark it was painful for Cole to look at.

It made Cole scared, that hole. Like he would fall into it if he wished to. If he let go of this body and—

“It will not work," Cole said, struggling to push the feeling away. "Not here, when Nightmare still rules.”

Fenris shook his head. “He kept other’s fears away,” he said. “It is who he is.”

“Trust is not enough. Fear, fettered, still festers.”

“You doubt I know him?” Fenris said, anger giving his words bite.

“No,” Cole said, still distracted by the _wrongness_ of how Hawke felt. “I doubt the version of him you have made for yourself.”

“I don’t need your riddles.”

“It wasn’t a riddle,” Cole said.

Fenris went quiet, looking back to Hawke. Cole didn’t doubt that somewhere in there was still the man Fenris knew, but he could see them now. Not like this. This mage could not connect to any magic. Nothing Hawke could do would bring them home.

  


They stayed like that for some time—Fenris’s hand in Hawke’s, Cole perched on what looked like an undisturbed bed—the only sound a _drip, drip_ of the last of the rain falling onto the roof. Without hunger, without a day or a night, without conversation, time edged forward. Forward and forward and no change in the dark hole in Hawke’s chest. The absolute _nothing_ within him.

And Cole wished that helping people didn’t end so often in this. Broken promises. A good intention and a head between their hands. Around Skyhold, he would gravitate toward the small things he knew he could fix. Misunderstandings, little wishes. A pastry left on a counter, or a compliment a little boy was waiting for. Cole couldn’t fix this with a wave of his hand. He couldn’t keep away the feeling that there was something he was too afraid to consider. That there was a reason that emptiness within Hawke pulled at him so. Pulled at him like the Fade itself, somewhere that is no longer home.

He stood, stretching one leg, then the other. If this was truly Nightmare’s realm, where was the spirit? This was nothing like the crumbling stone and brewing storm he remembered. The constant, heavy pressure of chaos on his mind. Like an intruder knocking on the door. Desperate to break in.

This place though? It felt dulled. Numb. Like they were behind glass or underwater. Cole stepped silently to the door and inhaled what felt like springtime air. Damp, cool. It didn’t smell like fear, but it also didn’t smell like new growth. It smelled like nothing.

“Spirit,” Fenris said. Cole tensed. “You can still move from this world to ours, can you not?”

Cole wound his arms around his middle and turned away. Of course, he had considered that as well. 

“I can leave,” Cole said. “Coming has made me remember. But I would have rather not remembered any of it.”

Fenris leaned toward Hawke like his very body was bound by an ever-tightening cord around them both. “So do it,” he said.

Cole rocked back and forth on his heels. He didn’t say that it frightened him more to leave than to stay. Not to leave the Fade, but to leave this body. Stepping back through to the waking world now, like this, wouldn’t be like coming here. Without a mage to hold the veil open, he would need to do so himself, as a spirit, in mind and in body. But _this_ body? This was a physical reminder of who he was. Past, present, future.

It felt like numbness here, but at least he could _feel._ It wasn’t a kindness to step out of this worn and tattered skin and muscle and bone. It was more than anybody could ask of him.

"To get help," Cole said. "I will do as you ask." 

Fenris laughed and looked away. "Don't pretend." 

“You talk as if this is punishment,” Cole said. “As if you deserved this.”

Fenris's hand was still on Hawke’s, trembling grip as if he were afraid they’d both float away if he let go. “It is what I have." 

“This isn’t where your path ends. Paved, patent, pouring forward from the past,” Cole said. He took a breath, filled his lungs and felt his ribs expand. Felt his heartbeat and wet his lips. “Please, Fenris, remember.”

Fenris looked from Hawke to Cole, then nodded. A small jerk of his head.

Cole breathed out and let his body go. He flitted, free and dashed out of this small cabin in an imaginary wood. Floated beyond the trees and twisted past the hurt.

He disappeared.

* * *

Many years ago, back in Kirkwall before Fenris could call Hawke, _Amatus,_ but after they’d shared a bed, Fenris and Hawke spoke of abominations. They were still awkward around one another, like touching the other’s skin would feel like touching a hot flame. Like it would leave a mark that others would see. Fenris danced around intimacy and instead spoke of knives and soldiers and Varric’s terrible schemes to try to forget what the gentleness of Hawke’s breath on his stomach felt like.

They sat across from each other at the Hanged Man. Hawke had ale and Fenris was stealing sips, insisting he didn’t want his own.

“It’s weakness,” Fenris said.

Hawke laughed. “You think it’s that simple?”

“It isn’t simple,” Fenris said. “Mages can be dangerous without being possessed. Magisters are plenty destructive without making pacts with demons. Such things were considered distasteful. Unimaginative.”

“Unimaginative?” Hawke said. “I imagine you’ve said that to Anders’ face.”

“Of course I have.”

Hawke shook his head and played with the rim of the mug. “I’d have you know, there are plenty of very _imaginative_ ways to invite spirits into your mind.”

“Blood magic,” Fenris said. “The magisters who used it for such things as bringing about spirit armies were not discouraged to per se. But it is about control in the Imperium. Things with their own minds are liabilities until they are tamed.”

“Like slaves?” Hawke said as if he didn’t want to. The word getting caught in his throat as he avoided Fenris’s gaze.

“Ah,” Fenris said. “But slaves already know their place. Why summon a demon if you have a willing slave?”

“For the power they possess,” Hawke said.

“Power,” Fenris repeated and reached for the mug. He let the lyrium of his markings alight as he took a sip. “How unimaginative.”

* * *

After Cole faded away, it took Fenris some time to remove himself from Hawke’s side. He wandered out of the little cabin into the surrounding woods. He counted his steps from front door to cliffside, then turned around and walked back.

Fenris then ventured the in the other direction, noting how the fresh green of the young leaves faded to gray the further he went. Rot crept into the trees and the sky darkened above him until finally, in the distance, he saw three Fearlings, snapping like dogs at his approach.

Fenris doubled back and followed his trail back to the cabin. The Fearlings did not follow.

* * *

Not as many years ago, back in Kirkwall before Fenris could fully let go of his anxieties in Hawke’s bed, but after they’d decided they would try again, Fenris and Hawke spoke of the freedom of mages. They were still awkward around one another, like touching the other’s skin would feel like touching a hot flame. Like it would leave a mark that others would see. Fenris tried his best to forget the other hands that had been where Hawke’s were now. He spoke with anger and spite because if he didn’t, he would relax back into old habits.

Fenris leaned on his elbow so he could watch Hawke’s face as he talked. He liked to see the flush across his cheeks and know he had put it there. The pink of Hawke’s lips as he spoke and the bead of sweat that trailed down his neck.

“This isn’t Tevinter,” Hawke said. “It’s about what we learn when we are young. How to protect ourselves and how to hide.”

“There are always secrets, no matter where you are,” Fenris said.

“Secrets, perhaps,” Hawke said. “But to what end? Survival, or political power?”

“Mages are not killed if they obey the laws,” Fenris said. “Is that not what you learn when you are young?”

Hawke reached up and pushed a lock of Fenris’s hair out of his eyes. “Obey,” he said. “If that is what you are told since you are young—that the very thing you are is _wrong_ —don’t you think that would change who you become?”

“That is your excuse for those mages out there that kill people, those we found in Darktown making monsters?”

Hawke’s fingers lingered on Fenris’s cheek. His neck. They whispered up to his ear, gentle. So gentle. “I’m saying they think they don’t have a choice.”

“Their choice is to join the Circle,” Fenris said.

“To submit to imprisonment?”

“Imprisonment?” Fenris scoffed. He took Hawke’s hand and held it, squeezed it tight like a small, skittish animal. “I see those mages walk free in their courtyards, reading books and learning their craft. They are educated, those _prisoners._ More educated than most of the masses. And yet, they talk of oppression.”

“The chains are not physical,” Hawke said. “They were made to fear the alternative.”

Fenris came off of his elbows, turning over so his body aligned against Hawke’s. He didn’t let go of Hawke’s hand, but rather pressed it against his chest as he relaxed into the bed. He could feel Hawke’s breath against his neck. He could easily fall asleep like this. If he only closed his eyes.

Instead, he spoke. “I found it odd when I first arrived in Kirkwall,” he said. “The symbols of chains that decorate the harbor. Is that what the Free Marches think slavery is? Because in my time in Minrathous, I hardly saw a single restraint.”

Hawke shifted behind him but didn’t interrupt.

“Chains are not a symbol of slavery,” Fenris continued, “because a true slave would never imagine running away.”

* * *

The next time Fenris left the cabin, he followed the edge of cliff north. Or, what he liked to imagine as north—the direction toward the shadow of the Black City. He measured how far he could walk before the fearlings swarmed around him and the stench of death replaced the clean bubble around Hawke’s cabin.

He let the fearlings come. With a sword in hand, he felt more in control than he did back next to the mute, sightless Hawke. Let them come and he would cut them down, one by one, until every demon in this Maker-forsaken land fell to his blade. Let Nightmare come.

* * *

Fewer years ago, back in Kirkwall before the city fell, Fenris fell easily into Hawke’s bed. He was no longer afraid of what it meant when Hawke kissed him. He knew Hawke’s wants, his needs, the meaning behind every sigh and moan. They staggered back from Sundermount, silent and drained, and Fenris would peel off the layers of his armor, dried dirt and blood falling to the floor. He’d stand in front of Hawke, naked and unafraid, and watch his love melt.

It made him feel powerful, the things he could do to Hawke in the softness of night.

“Fenris,” Hawke said on one such night, voice pitching high.

Fenris chuckled. He had his gauntlets in his hands. “Is this enough for you?” he teased, setting them down with a clatter and stretching his fingers.

Hawke hummed, taking Fenris’s hands in his.

“I’ll just stop here then,” Fenris said. “Though I _would_ very much like a bath.”

Hawke lifted Fenris’s hand to his cheek, rubbing his fingers against his beard. “Not yet,” he said, eyes fluttering closed.

It had been a hard couple of days. Slavers on the coast had been more possessive of their cargo than he’d expected and the weather hadn’t made it a more pleasant experience. The whole time, he had wished for the fire in Hawke’s hearth.

Fenris shifted, pulling one leg over so he could sit on Hawke’s lap. He pressed himself into Hawke’s chest, hips against hips, and teased his hand against Hawke’s jaw. Hawke pulled him in, nipping at Fenris’s hand and pulling at Fenris’s breastplate.

“Not yet?” Fenris said.

Hawke made a needy noise at the back of his throat. “Love,” he said. “You don’t know what you do to me.”

But he did. Fenris knew _exactly_ what he did. He looked through his eyelashes, licked his lips, and Hawke pulled him down for a lingering kiss. Fenris didn’t think he could handle it at first, posturing himself in the same ways he once did for Danarius. Flaunting the parts of him he knew would please.

_I will be good. I can be so good for you._

But it had felt like this was what he was meant to do. For Hawke’s love, for his eyes on him, he’d do anything.

Hawke hastily tore off Fenris’s armor and underclothes until his damp skin shimmered in the firelight. He sighed into Hawke’s mouth and arched his spine at his touch. _More._ His nerves came alive with each of Hawke’s attentions. Fingers slid down. _More._ They swept against the hair that trained down his navel and Fenris’s cock twitched. Before Hawke could make it all the way down, Fenris stood, taking a couple of steps away from the chair.

Hawke’s eyes followed him and Fenris was oh, so hard.

Fenris remembers what it was like when Danarius called him to his bed. He’d walk the room naked, sometimes with delicate jewelry over his neck and wrists, so his master could see him. Drink in the glow of his markings and get off on the way he bent to his commands. Danarius would be hard before he could get his robes off.

This wasn’t so different.

“I want you inside me,” Fenris said, slicking his fingers with oil. He climbed halfway onto the bed, one leg dangling, the other twisted so he could reach down and start opening himself up.

Hawke bit his lip and groaned. “You look— _maker_ —”

Fenris added a second finger, making sure Hawke could see. “You’re still clothed,” he purred.

Hawke stripped himself, leaving leathers and armor in piles on the floor. His tongue reached Fenris’s skin first, across his exposed thighs, following a line of lyrium up his side to his chest. They fell against the pillows together, Hawke biting Fenris’s lip and Fenris snaking his free hand through Hawke’s hair.

“Beautiful,” Hawke mumbled into his neck. “Mine—so beautiful for me—” He kept stumbling over his praises as he replaced Fenris’s fingers with his own. The pressure made stars bloom in Fenris’s eyes.

“More,” Fenris said.

Hawke swallowed Fenris’s moan as he moved his fingers in a strengthening rhythm.

When he felt as if he can’t take any more, Hawke removed his hand. Fenris, panting, pushed himself onto his hands and knees. A shiver ran through his shoulders.

“Is this what you want, my love?” Hawke said as he lined himself up behind him.

“Yes,” Fenris said. “I am yours.”

Hawke entered slowly. More slowly than Danarius ever had, but it made Fenris’s mind go blank all the same. _“Kaffas,”_ Fenris swore, rutting against Hawke.

“I want you to feel—Maker—to feel _good,”_ Hawke said.

Fenris never says it has never been about him. He would never say that the only thing that mattered to him was Hawke’s pleasure, his need for Fenris at his side. Because, of course, his body reacted the way it was made to and, of course, no matter what he felt, he would always make it look enjoyable. Usually, it was. But that was never the plan. The reason he yearned for the days he could follow Hawke to bed was so he could do _this_ to him. Unmake him. Positioning his body, squeezing and twisting and making small noises in his throat, it all came without thinking. The movements were trained like his swordcraft. Again and again. Do it _right_ and he’d be rewarded.

He waits for the after.

Fenris turned over onto his back, lazily gripping himself and letting his legs fall wide. Hawke shivered, hands lingering over Fenris’s waist. His hips. The movement of Fenris’s arm as he pleasured himself. He tasted Fenris’s lips before entering him again.

Hawke’s pace picked up and his breathing started to go ragged. “Fen—” he cried.

Fenris pumped himself harder, knowing Hawke was watching. He whimpered, shuddered, and spilled over his chest.

“Fen, I’m—” Hawke said into Fenris’s shoulder and came, holding Fenris tight.

* * *

Nightmare never came for Fenris as he stood on that lonely cliff. The fearlings wandered close as he snarled at them, but only a few came in the range of his sword. Instead, most scuttled over the rocks, mocking him with their black, unblinking eyes.

Cole had told him that they were meant to look like his fears. That each person saw spiders, or rabid dogs, or enemy soldiers based on what the fearlings felt inside them. But to Fenris, they always looked simply like what they were, demons. He wondered what that said about him. Shouldn’t they have been slavers? Magisters? Perhaps this land grew tired of his restless mind and let him be, deserted on this island of Hawke’s making.

This was the edge of where he could go. Behind him was the sanctuary of silent trees and unmoving time. Beyond was more fear with no end.

For a moment, he wondered what would happen if he jumped from the cliff into the ocean.

* * *

In those years before Kirkwall fell, Fenris lived for the moments he could relax into Hawke’s arms. After the fights and after the sex, when the night was quiet and his mind could stop turning. When Hawke would turn over and murmur _I love you_ but it would sound like _thank you._

“Why do you still live in that awful mansion?” Hawke said one night, sweat still drying on his collar.

Fenris swept his hand across Hawke’s bare chest. “I’ve grown fond of the smell of damp upholstery,” he said.

Hawke chuckled, sleepy and low. “Really, Fen?”

“It’s true,” Fenris said. “And I’ve found the wall hangings a special delight. I throw knives at dead magister’s eyes every morning.”

“As relaxing as that sounds,” Hawke said. “I was thinking of trying a different sort of arrangement.”

Fenris kept his hand against Hawke’s skin, running it back and forth. “If you say you’re going to get me a Marabi, I—”

“You know what I mean, Fenris,” Hawke said. “I could one of the extra rooms made up for you easily. Orana likes spending time with you and you already spend half the days up here…”

Fenris’s hand stopped at Hawke’s side so his arm was curled close between them. Awkwardly so.

“Please, let me do this for you,” Hawke said. “You deserve so much more than what you give yourself. I—I want to show you—”

“Later,” Fenris said. “When I feel—when I really have earned it, this place by your side.”

Hawke was silent and Fenris listened to the sound of his heartbeat. Far away, he could hear the rustle of someone walking about downstairs and the short whine of the Marabi begging for food. They would both be off to bed soon, he knew. The moon was already high, shining through the windows.

“I love you,” Hawke said, but this time it sounded like a plea.

Fenris dug his nose into Hawke’s neck and breathed in. He placed a kiss there, gently, hoping it would be enough, for now.

* * *

Fenris returned to the little hut in the untouchable forest buried in a fade full of nightmares. Hawke was still exactly where he had left him, hunched over the small desk, staring at a piece of parchment that held no words. If Fenris let himself unfocus his eyes and glance quickly over the room, he could almost pretend that this was normal. That it was one more stop on their journey as they fled the crumbling Kirkwall, stopped for a night or two in an abandoned cabin by the sea.

But as soon as he looked more closely, it all fell apart. Hawke was too still. Even in his most tired, worn-out days, he’d relax into a chair with his feet up and toes wiggling. He’d ask for Fenris to join him—to sit on his lap, or the table, or the floor as they looked up at the ceiling. To drag him to the bed. This Hawke was still except for the shallow breath that moved his chest and a small twitch of his fingers that signaled he was not yet dead.

Closer still, Fenris noticed new scars across Hawke’s hands and cheek. His hair had grown, and Fenris remembered he had offered to cut it at their last meeting. “Shaggy, like the dogs you are so fond of,” he said. “How will you see your enemies coming?”

Silence. And it made him _angry,_ that nothingness that followed.

Fenris approached Hawke from behind like he knew he hated. _Maker, don’t sneak up on me. You’ll end up frozen to the mantle._ He took off his gauntlet and ran his fingers up Hawke’s arm. He dug his nails into the flesh that was not covered in leather.

“I came for you,” Fenris said. He could hear the strain in his voice as he willed it not to crack. “I followed you.”

Hawke did not blink. Fenris pressed harder, enough to break skin, and Hawke only leaned away, as if Fenris was a bothersome insect.

“You left me,” Fenris said as he released his hand. “After all those years together, I thought—what did I do?”

Fenris backed away until his back hit the far wall. It wasn’t far, he could still make it back to Hawke in two or three strides, but it felt like a greater distance.

“You _left me!”_ Fenris shouted. And it felt… not good, but _right_ to fill his lungs with the stale dream air and let it tear through his throat. “You _promised me._ You said—you told me—Did you not think I could do it? Handle this _insanity_ you think is brave? _Fasta vass_ I made it to the fade _despite_ you.”

He kicked a stool across the floor and cracked against the bedpost. _“Look at me!!”_ He screamed. Then, quieter. “I was good. I did everything—what else did you want from me?”

Nothing. Fenris closed his eyes and sank to the floor. “I thought you promised me a future at the end of all that running,” he said. “I deserved a future.”

 


End file.
